Ambassador D.B.Venkatesh Varma served in the Indian Foreign Service from 1988 to 2021. During his diplomatic career, he worked in the Office of the External Affairs Minister and in the Prime Minister’s Office. He served as India’s Ambassador to Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, to the Kingdom of Spain and to the Russian Federation, until October 2021.He has vast experience in India’s Security and Defence policies and served as Joint Secretary in charge of Disarmament and International Security in the Ministry of External Affairs. He was the first Recipient of the S.K.Singh Award for Excellence in the Indian Foreign Service in 2011 for his contribution to the negotiations of the Civil Nuclear Initiative.

Contributions 
As Russia-Ukraine conflict reaches two year mark, it is advantage Putin With the West locked into a semi-permanent conflict with Russia, and the fraying deterrence equations between the big powers, the consequent disequilibrium on the Eurasian continent is a matter of deep concern. It works primarily to China’s advanta...

India-Russia Relations Show Resilience and Stability The year 2023 ended on high note for India-Russia relations with the successful visit of External Affairs Minister Dr S. Jaishankar. The five-day visit to Moscow and St Petersburg was significant for numerous reasons for both sides and also contained...

Forgotten Dimensions of Strategy: Russia- Ukraine War - Lessons for India (Given below is the modified version of presentation given by Amb. DB Venkatesh Varma during Prof. Matinuzzaman Zuberi Memorial Lecture, Jawaharlal Nehru University on 7 December 2023.) Kissinger Syndrome By the time I joined th...

NATO after the Vilnius Summit: An Indian Assessment The NATO Summit held in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, 11-12 July 2023, was momentous in many respects. It took place against the background of the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine whose active phase of hostilities is now well past 500...

Risks of Exaggeration: What to Make of Russia’s Relations with China after the Xi Visit Xi Jinping’s three-day visit to Moscow, 20-23March, his first abroad in his third term as China’s President, evoked considerable interest. Two joint statements and a dozen bilateral cooperation documents were signed. Xi’s personal equation wit...

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